Mechanical side of treating their heart disease. So thats sort of how it all unfolded. Host youre also an author now. What possessed you to write a book . Guest well, so this book that ive written basically, its a memoir of my journey through medical training, but its written through the lens of race. There are a lot of physician authors out there and a lot of books out there, but i feel like race is a really important issue in medicine, and these authors largely overlook this subject. So i think thats a really, thats an omission because so many of the leading medical schools and Teaching Hospitals all across america are situated in communities with large black populations. And in many cases, theres been historical tensions between the communities and these large institutions. But thats a story that really hasnt been told in a narrative way. And so thats, so writing this book i was trying to really tell two stories my own personal journey of becoming a young black man from a working class background scaling this sort of academic medical ladder but at the same time telling the stories of everyday black people facing Serious Health problems and trying to weave those two stories together. Host what is your background . Guest i grew up in maryland, suburban maryland kind of on the corridor between washington, d. C. And baltimore. Working Class Community all black, you know . Not segregated, but thats how it played out. That was my background growing up. Host were your parents educated . Guest well host did they support, did they encourage your education . Guest yes, they did encourage my education absolutely. So my parents grew up in the kind of time of segregation, my dad in a very rural part of virginia. Didnt get a chance to finish high school. He went into the military and worked as a at a food store in a sort of job in a typical Grocery Store and worked there as a meat cutter for several years until he retired. My mom didnt finish high school, didnt have a chance to go to college and she worked for the federal government for many years. I did have an older brother and he was really the first person in our family who went to college and graduated from college, so he was that sort of role model in a way. The community we grew up in, it was almost like the way to get out was to be an athlete. As is the case in so many africanamerican communities. And he was a living example of someone who could succeed in this other way and that really was an important part of my development. Host at what point in your life did you decide you wanted to go into medical school . Guest probably high school. I was a good student at an early age, but when i got to high school i was able to test into this Magnet Program that was in our school district. It was a science and technology Magnet Program. I almost didnt a teach basically, made me do it. I didnt want to do it at first and that really was transformative. I was able to get exposed to people who came from different backgrounds, whites asian people, and it really helped me see another world and another opportunity. And as i was seeing i could do really well medicine seemed like a good way to give back to the community and make a difference in a positive way. I certainly didnt have any of those sort of examples in my own life up until then. Host black man in a white coat is the name of the book and on page 3 you write being black can be bad for your health. Guest yes. Thats very i very true. Basically any health measure, number that you want to look at whether its Life Expectancy which is considerably shorter in africanamericans, particularly in men infant mortality rates death rates from all sorts of cancers, all of them are considerably worse in black people than in white people and really any other group you can compare them to in america. There are a lot of reasons why that is. I would say theres probably three ways of looking at that. Theres structural, kind of systembased factor, things like black people being less likely to have health insurance, more likely isolated in geographic areas where theres less access to good quality medical care. Thats one factor. Then theres the sort of doctor patient relationship factor where black people often for many reasons of history are kind of more wary of seeking treatment and also that means they present to health care much later, and preventable diseases are now more advanced and thats certainly a big factor. And thirdly, theres communitylevel factors in terms of diets and exercise, and these are all factors as well. So there are many ways of looking at it. Host how many black psychiatrists are there in America Today . Guest i dont have an exact number, but in general there are probably about 56 of physicians as a whole are africanamericans. In psychiatry, its a little bit less, maybe anywhere from 34 . The numbers vary depending on what data set you look at, but its pretty small. Host your patients black . Your patients white . Your patients a mix . Guest mix. Mix. And that leads to some interest things. So in a place like as i mentioned earlier many of these medical schools theyre located in these communities that have large black populations. For instance durham, where duke is, its about 45 black. And johns hopkins, which is closer to my hometown in baltimore, you know, 65 black. So you have large groups of black patients and very small numbers of black doctors, theres no doubt about that. Host so whats the reaction you get from a white patient from a black patient . Guest from a white patient, so when i was younger and starting out most people had very positive reactions but there are many people who are wary of you, and theyre not sure what to make of you. Theres some people who, i would say maybe they harbor some prejudices. Theres some cases i had pretty frank cases or accelerately prejudiced overtly prejudiced, and i write about some of them in the book. I think on average most people are wary but after you get to know them and talk to them, they kind of come around. There is this sort of idea of having to prove yourself which is a challenge to present. Maybe the expectation at first that youre not as good as another doctor can, and you have to kind of work with that. Host and thats something you get from your white patients or patients across the board . Guest i think across the board, but its more pronounced in white patients. Ive certainly had black patients where i had to overcome the perception that i would be less qualified. Its more common with white patients, but its happened with all. Host has it changed over the years, in the last 20 years the perception of a black doctor . And how people view them . Guest i think there actually, are more black doctors. You go back 40, 50 yearsing a, there were years ago, there were very very few black doctors. I think that has affected perceptions some. Its still a battle, though because in many parts of the country theres still very few black doctors. People may have never seen a black doctor in their life. Host whyd you write the book . Guest i felt like there was this untold story is, you know . Theres a lot of actually, theres a lot of talk about disparities and inequality, but not as much about that in the health realm. And each more so not in a way even more so not in a way thats accessible where youre telling it through the story of everyday people. Certainly, one important way of getting information, telling stories is also a way to really capture the essence of what that really means to people on the ground. Host give us one example from the book of a patients reaction to you positive, negative whatever. Guest one story that i think really kind of stands out, this is when i was an intern. This was my first year as that brand new doctor, that really most difficult year as a young doctor. And i was on a medical team medical service, and an elderly white gentleman came in. And when he came to the hospital he saw black nurses black nurses aides, several black staff in the hospital. And he made a comment in notsouncertain terms that he did not want a black doctor. He didnt use that word, but he did not want a black doctor. And it just so happened that he had the misfortune if you will, of being assigned to the one team in the hospital that had a black doctor, which was me. So it had already worked out that way. And you can imagine thats probably not the best way to start a doctor patient relationship. In this case. So he came, he had his perception. And because he had that perception, i in turn had negative thoughts about him as you can imagine. So this gentleman was very sick, and he was old and really towards the end of his life. And his family had kind of similar approach to life in terms of the way they responded to me initially. But over the course of several weeks in the hospital, hour by hour, day by day i was able to chip away at this sort of huge racial divide that we had. And by the end, he was really very resent e to me receptive to me, his family was receptive to me. It was an amazing transformation. And it made me think about how when someone is really sick, you kind of strip away some of the superficial barriers that we all seem to have and really make a Human Connection and allow it to flourish. I think thats a lesson that we can learn for everyday life. Its a lesson from the medical world, but it can be applied to everyday life. Nowadays were in a time where theres so much racial discussion thats often so unpleasant. Host isnt there an unfairness to that, that you have to work at chipping away the prejudices before you can treat the patients . Guest sure, sure. I mean, i talk about that in the book. Theres a lot of aspects of it, and thats part of why i wanted to write the book, because very few black doctors have written about this perspective and this experience. I think it is, there are certainly theres unfairness to it, but i think its more important to focus on how i dealt with it and how i overcame it. But its certainly not fair. Host black man in a white coat comes out in september of 2015. The author is dr. Damon tweedy. Youre watching booktv on cspan2. Booktv recently visits capitol hill to ask members of congress what theyre reading this summer. Ill probably read some more novels. Ive read recently a couple by joel rosenberg. Theyre kind of in brad thor genre of International Terrorism and those kind of things so ill probably read a few more of those. Havent decided what kind of biography ill read, but probably will look at someone in history and grab one of those and read it as well. And booktv wants to know what youre reading as well. Tweet us your answer booktv or you can post it on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. Booktv continues with a twopart event on health care. First, Phillip Kline author of overcoming obamacare. He moderates a Panel Discussion on what can be done to reverse the Affordable Care act. Then louisiana governor bobby jindal provides commentary on the aca and answers questions from audience members. I just wanted to start with some brief opening comments to frame todays discussion. When it comes to health care, those on the right are often defined more by what theyre against than by what theyre for. The truth is that there have been a lot of plans that have been offered on right as alternatives to obamacare, but